September 15, 2013

Does Jesus or God prefer the distressed, discontented, debtors and the have-nots? Some people think that God prefers the ignorant and the have-nots. That’s not true. But what God does want usually eliminates everybody else. It isn’t that God prefers the have-nots: but He prefers something that tends to eliminate everyone but the havenots.

God will have nothing less than all of you: your talents, your gifts…and a part of you is not enough. It is 100 percent. I have said for years, if I could somehow conceive of a Christian commitment that would require only 90 percent of one’s life and let people keep the key to a 10 percent room in their house I could “win more to the Kingdom.”

But Jesus said, He “that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:33)

There are no “volunteers” in the Kingdom. On every level, this is the commitment. It is morally wrong to subject any child in Sunday school to a teacher who thinks he is doing God a favor to teach.

There is no such thing as “your work” and “His work.” You are either His 100 percent or you are not His, and it is all His. You have no family: you raise your family for His glory.

You don’t have a business: you are a steward managing your business for Him. You don’t have a career or a future: you are His to command! There is no church that is mine or yours; it is His.

God will have nothing less than all of you. And that God would take such stuff on which to build His Kingdom as typified in the Adullamites and illustrated in the disciples tells me that it means a lot to Him to have 100 percent. He will start over with such as these, like the parable Jesus told of a certain man who made a great supper and sent nvitations. And all those invited made excuses. One had a wife, another had a yoke of oxen to look at, another had a piece of ground. The man said to his servant, “Bring in the lame and the halt.” (Luke 14:16-24)

When God calls, He wants all of you; that is a serious side of this message.